A number of applications and technologies involve structures having a well-defined arrangement of chemically distinct components at the surface of a substrate. A common example is a substrate surface having metal conductor regions separated by insulator regions. Normally, these structures are defined by patterning processes such as lithography, embossing, and stamping, and have length scales ranging from 10 nanometers to several microns. In many of these systems it may be necessary or highly beneficial to apply an additional component or treatment to only one of the components at the surface. One technique for performing this task is through the use of a mask to protect regions where this additional application or treatment is not desired. Effectively, the mask material directs this treatment to the intended surfaces that are fully exposed. Unfortunately, typical procedures to generate a mask by lithographic or other means can be expensive and error prone. Thus, a method in which these conventional approaches can be circumvented would be highly advantageous.
A particular example in which such strategies would be useful involves integrated circuits comprised of metal and dielectric components. It is widely known that the speed of propagation of interconnect signals is one of the most important factors controlling overall circuit speed as feature sizes are reduced and the number of devices per unit area is increased. Throughout the semiconductor industry, there has been a strong drive to reduce the dielectric constant, k, of the dielectric materials existing between metal lines and/or to minimize the thickness of layers having comparatively larger dielectric constants, e.g., cap barrier layers. Both of these approaches reduce the effective dielectric constant, keff, of the components between metal lines, and as a result, interconnect signals travel faster through conductors due to a reduction in resistance-capacitance (RC) delays. Unfortunately, these strategies are difficult to implement due to limitations in maintaining significant properties, i.e., mechanical, barrier, electrical, etc., that result with a reduction in thickness or change in the chemistry of the layers.